English 607.20 - Studies in Canadian Literature (21st-Century Canadian Poetry)

Instructor: Dr. Christian Bök

 Tuesday, 15:00 - 17:30

 Mail to: cbok [at] ucalgary [dot] ca

 Course Description

This course provides a survey of Canadian poetry that has come to define the character of avant-garde writing in this country at the beginning of the new millennium.  Most of these poets have been members of the Kootenay School of Writing or have been influenced by this coterie.  Much of their work has gained increasing renown internationally, but remains little understood in Canada, despite the fact that many of these poets have been writing for at least fifteen years.  Many of these works express a polemical awareness about the discursive ideologies that structure language itself.  The course examines this poetry from a theoretical perspective and attempts to account for the lack of coherent, avant-garde tradition in Canada, despite the robust traditions that have appeared elsewhere in the world over the last one hundred years. The Canadian, academic community has generally neglected to support the cultural activity of younger writers from smaller presses, particularly when such poets do experimental work; consequently, many early books by these poets have fallen out of print, and only the most recent ones remain available; hence, the title for this course draws attention to the fact that the syllabus consists only of books published after the year 2000.

Required Reading:

 

Derek Beaulieu: Fractal Economies

Kevin Davies: Comp

Jeff Derksen: Transnational Muscle Cars

Rachel Zolf: Human Resources

Bill Kennedy and Darren Wershler-Henry: Apostrophe

Darren Wershler-Henry: The Tapeworm Foundry

Greg Betts: If Language

Dan Farrell: The Inkblot Record

Lisa Robertson, The Weather

Karen Mac Cormack: At Issue

Sina Queyras: Lemon Hound

[Course Kit of selected essays]